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After spending several years in social services, Nicole has finally followed her lifelong dream of being a full-time writer. In addition to her work for The Hudsucker, Nicole is also a staff writer for Womanista. An avid comic book fan, BBQ aficionado, professional makeup artist and first-time mom, Nicole can be found exploring Kansas City rich history when she's not blogging about suburban life at Suburban Flamingo.

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The FlashBack: “The Flash” – Episode 21 “Grodd Lives”

The Flash is DC’s television adaptation of the comic book of the same name. It airs Tuesday nights at 8/7 Central on The CW. Our writer, Nicole Drum recaps the series each week updating you on the latest episode here in The FlashBack.

This week we got Grodd. I could have watched an entire episode of just Grodd being Grodd, but that doesn’t make for good television. We have some other things that need to be addressed in addition to our awesome Grodd. Specifically, we have to clean up for last week where some pretty big things happened and that’s where we open up. There will be spoilers.

The episode’s opening voiceover is done not by Barry, but by Iris. She explains how she feels about her discovery of Barry’s secret identity as the Flash. This is probably the first time in the entire show that I haven’t wanted to throw rocks at Iris. She actually comes across as competent and human in her scenes where she confronts Barry and her father in regards to the Flash. I’m hopeful this is a turning point.

Image Credit: the CW

Back to Grodd. He’s why we’re here. It would seem that there is a sentient ape on the loose in Central City and he’s gunning for the team. For fans of the comic books this seems normal, but it may not be so normal for people just now getting into the Flash so we helpfully have Cisco to put it in a little bit of context for us: you can consider Grodd to be a result of the kind of things seen in “Planet of the Apes”. Dr. Creepy was involved. It’s all kind of twisted, but it works.

So what does a sentient gorilla want? Vengeance. He goes for Barry and his crew, but he also goes for good old General Eiling. If you remember, Eiling was less-than decent to Grodd and it would seem our Grodd remembers. He has mind controlled Eiling to commmit crimes (in this case attack gold shipments.) Team Flash is able to apprehend Eiling, which makes for some great exposition as we come to understand Grodd’s origin. We find out that Caitlin once had a bond with litle Grodd and that the ape considers Wells to be his father. This is scary because that means Grodd is loyal Dr. Creepy.

Even scarier? Dr. Creepy still has Eddie. So the team has two things to work on, finding Eddie and Grodd. Cisco, Caitlin, Barry, and even Joe put their best efforts out to find Grodd but come up empty. Who comes to the rescue? Iris. Welcome to the team, Iris. Please don’t screw this up. She uses resources she has a journalist to figure out where Grodd is. Cisco, Joe, and Barry end up in the sewers, going deeper and deeper and finding more and more evidence of Grodd. The acting here is all intense and describing things would do it no justice, but the moment when Grodd kidnaps Joe and then forces Joe to point his own gun at his head is absolutely horrifying and amazing at the same time.

Flash rolls up on Grodd, but can’t fight him. Every time he attempts to attack, Grodd projects the pain he felt at torture onto Flash which keeps Flash from fighting him. For a brief moment you feel badly for Grodd. Flash tags Grodd with a tranq dart that happens to also be a tracker. This lets him find Grodd where Flash promptly attempts to use a sonic punch to take the ape out. It fails. It fails hard and Grodd throws his psychic weight around. Flash is nearly out for the count because of Grodd’s projecting, but it is Iris that is able to get through to the Flash and get him calm. With Iris’ help, the Flash is able to fight the gorilla, ultimately pushing Grodd in front of a train (don’t worry; we see Grodd climbing a building later at the close of the episode.)

Oh. And what about Eddie? Dr. Wells is a jerk. He taunts Eddie in every way he can. He tells him that the Thawne family is impressive and notable in the future but that he, Eddie, is the only weak link. He also taunts Eddie about how he is going to lose Iris to Barry, even showing the poor guy a future newspaper that carries the “Iris West-Allen” byline. It’s not a good time for Eddie. I wonder how much more he can take before he breaks.

We’re down to the final two episodes of the season! I’m hoping that we see more Grodd before it’s over. All in all this episode was absolutely amazing. It wasn’t so much the actual series of events, but the great acting in every single scene that made this episode just outstanding. I really hope we get more Grodd Love.

What did you think about the Grodd-errific episode? Let’s chat in comments!